Years of traveling have taught me one important thing about traveling—you can plot, plan, and meticulously arrange, but the best things happen by chance. And sometimes holding together that carefully organized plan is more trouble than it’s worth. I’m sure this is a lesson of South African origin because although South Africa is a much less hectic African country than some of its brothers and sisters, time here moves way differently than home. Impatience in SA will only give you high blood pressure while you wait for things to happen “juuuuust now.” ‘Just now’ being a famous South African phrase indicating that something will happen anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours from now. I am in no way exaggerating about the upper limit of that timeframe. Trust me.
My most basic plan for going somewhere is:
1) Get plane ticket
2) Make sure passport is in order
3) Have a confirmed place to stay for at least the first
night
4) Learn how to say ‘hello, thank you, sorry’ in the lingua
franca
Everything else is just details...
When I planned my current trip to South Africa I confirmed
my 2-week time slots with the friends I would be working with, asked if I could
stay with them while I shadowed, and made sure I had the correct vet
clothes/gear sorted out for each place.
Just about everything else was up in the air…which is not how I operate
these days. Vet school has been an
exercise is squeezing tightly to my schedule because it feels like any minute
can be a wasted moment. Our time is just
so precious. It’s actually kind of
maddening. I really don’t like living this
way because I’m much more of a ‘let it flow’ kind of person. But, you know, one day I will get to be a
human I like again. I tried to make
lists of things I wanted to do and people I needed to see, but eventually I
stopped. My tourist list is pathetically
awesome (which = attainable!) and consists of two things: visit Venda, ride
Gautrain. I’m 50% done with my list, in
case you were wondering. I know my
current mode of death-grip planning would not work in SA. I just had to let it be. The people I wanted to see would slowly
appear when I was in the same time zone and I was sure veterinary (and other)
adventures would abound.
Well…I was right. My
time at the Johannesburg Zoo is the perfect embodiment of this concept. My bird vet friend arranged for me to go to the
Zoo for a few days to shadow. What an
excellent surprise! The Zoo has on-site
accommodation for visiting students and collaborators, so I lived in the Zoo
House for a few days. How cool! See…the best things happen by chance!
My quiet red panda neighbor chowing down Not pictured: my loud lemur neighbor |
The Zoo was pretty slow while I was there. Their hospital is under construction, so they
are working in a temporary space. I
arrived on a day when auditors were there, so there was a lot of paperwork to
catch up on for the vets. We would do a
procedure or two a day and most of the rest of the time I spent chatting with a
fellow South African clinical year veterinary student or playing with a young
caracal, serval, and striped hyena. My
time was still very informative. I am not
interested in zoo medicine or wildlife as a future career path, but there are
few people that could not be excited by the prospect of getting some wild
animal adventures worked into their day.
Plus anything that is not my area is always a chance for me to learn
something new. Honestly the concepts are
the same with those animals I have never heard of. The vet there told me that really you just
have to know what it toxic to a particular animal and use your other basic
knowledge for the rest.
The new hospital under construction |
The craziest thing I did was help give a venomous snake some
oral drugs. I put a tube into its mouth
while it was being held and then delivered some anti-parasitic drugs with a
syringe. Yeah, I stuck my hand in front
of a poisonous snake’s mouth. It was
freaky, but I’m glad I did it. Again, it’s
good to do things that make you nervous.
One thing that really struck me about the role of the
veterinarian at the Zoo was how much that person has to interact with all
parties on the grounds. The vet is a
true ambassador who must work with the keepers and handlers, the general workers,
the administration, and basically anyone that is involved with an animal
there. It’s actually pretty unique as
most people seemed to just work in their area.
There were private farmers that transported animals on/off the property
and to/from game farms. The vet must
work with these folks as well. The
people skills involved in orchestrating the medical care of these animals is
off the charts. It really takes a
special person to be able to make all that run smoothly. Props to the vets there!
Catching a naughty elephant on a morning walk The grass is always greener! |
Since I lived at the Zoo I got to be on the grounds outside
of hours the public was there. I went on
a few walks before and after the Zoo was open.
I really wanted to walk around in the dark, but it’s still South Africa
and it really was not safe to do alone.
There is security that roams the grounds, but the Zoo is right in the
middle of Johannesburg, so…nope. Not the
best idea. Another South African lesson
I know well: You can’t always get what
you want especially when it comes to the degrees of freedom I enjoy as a single
woman in the USA. The Johannesburg Zoo is pretty old, but they really have some
nice features. There is also a national
zoo in Pretoria, which is about an hour away.
It seemed like the National Zoo was kind of like the big sister, but I
see a lot of potential at the Joburg Zoo.
They have a lot going for them and a new director is a veterinarian. The staff veterinarians are also fairly new,
both in their careers and in their time employed at the Zoo. That almost always translates into vibrancy
and they were very excited about making the Joburg Zoo into a conservation powerhouse. I see big things in the future of that zoo.
Vet students united! Me & Kelsey |
Besides having a red panda and a lemur as neighbors, one of
my favorite things about being at the Zoo was my time spent chatting to the other
veterinary student shadowing there. We
are both clinical year students, although she is a little farther along in her
year than my class is, and had some other common ground in that I also studied
at the school she is currently attending.
I’m “happy” to report that we have both been going through very similar
experiences in our final year, albeit a continent apart. They have roughly the same amount of clinical
time that we do in terms of number of weeks and they cover roughly the same
subjects for roughly the same number of weeks.
She dislikes being told “you’re the doctor now” (when you patently are
not) just as much as I do and has faced a number of the other challenges that
are really too long to list here. I
guess basically it’s good to know others are facing the same things. Always makes me feel a little bit less crazy.
I was really welcomed at the Zoo. Everyone was so nice to me and I really had a
great time. I even got to spend time
with the new director of the Zoo. I will
have an interview with him and the staff vets online soon at the U of IL
College of Veterinary Medicine’s website.
I’ll link it here once it’s up.
Many thanks to all those who gave me the opportunity and took the time
to teach me. I had a great time!
Zoo crew & me L-R: Dr. Kresen Pillay, me, Melanie Reddy (vet nurse), and Dr. Johan Naude |